Ah, the beginning times of the clamp-down! Not a fan of where this is going in general on the internet 
Thanks for the notification guys. I remember a couple days before it worked so didn’t think to turn off VPN.
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Maybe but the reality is that in some countries it is a legal requirement for the true identity of all shareholders to be public (and that hasn’t changed). That isn’t really compatible with the internet era, and certainly isn’t compatible with using a VPN to pay by cryptocurrency and giving a fake id (not that I am suggesting that you personally intended to do that).
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Revealing true identity does not necessitate revealing true location, IP address, and ISP. Banking and stock trading can be done using a VPN in the USA. Blocking VPN users is unnecessary.
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In my country it includes your address (location). Corporations law doesn’t care about IP address though.
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I was using location to mean literal location on the planet, not physical address where one lives. Location is obtained from IP address and is not needed for identification purposes when doing online banking and stock trading. For instance, physically (or digitally by VPN) travelling to another state within the USA does not bar someone from accessing these services.
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See a possible workaround here: Www.startengine.com/offering/purism gives me 403 - I can't invest my Bitcoin - #13 by amarok
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It is - in the event that the law has been broken. Assuming you are not using a VPN (or any other obscuring technology), your IP address at the time you accepted the offer of shares + the time at which that occurred … identifies you (as always, depending on the country in question and the laws that provide for that).
In the context of this topic, yes, they probably don’t care about where you were physically at the time that you carried out the transaction. (In the context of other situations where the law has been broken, your physical location at the time would be highly relevant.)
In no way am I suggesting that if you use a VPN then you are a criminal. I am just explaining why (for a given jurisdiction where the laws in that jurisdiction require a person to be identified, and located at least as far as “country” goes) the service provider cares to disable the use of a VPN.
In essence, Canada (for example) is saying “under Canadian law you must not offer shares to people in Canada” and StartEngine is saying “we will make the following reasonable efforts to implement that: we will geoblock Canadian IP addresses and we will block all known VPNs so that a person cannot trivially bypass our geoblock” and then Canada is saying “ok, well, if you do that then we will not sue your ass if you occasionally fail and some Canadians slip through the cracks”.
If you have a problem with that (and I completely understand that anyone would) then you don’t have a problem with the service provider (in this case StartEngine). You have a problem with the laws that apply so as to require identification and to restrict location. (It is a much bigger discussion as to whether those laws are reasonable and proportionate, particularly in the internet era.)
I’m sure they don’t know about every VPN provider on the planet. So probably if you choose the ‘right’ VPN provider, you can use a VPN but still accept the offer of shares. Of if you happen to be in Canada then you can travel across the border in order to conduct the transaction.
Nothing in the previous paragraph is intended to encourage you to break the law. Just pointing out that no system is foolproof.
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New Post (update):
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No, your IP address is used to track your activities. When doing online banking/investing, your username, password, and 2FA is used to validate you based on the information already collected in order to legally identify you (full legal name, ID, social security number, and home address). Your IP address is absolutely not used as a form of identification or validation of your identity; it is used for tracking purposes. There is a major difference between identifying a person (name, ID, social security number, etc.) and identifying a person’s current location (physical and/or digital).
I’m not here to argue about the merits of tracking; I was merely correcting something you had said. Your IP address might be required for any number of things, but your identity is not one of them when doing online banking/investing.
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Thanks for the discussion and clarifications here. There is one reason I am not going to invest, but that is not due to purism: with such an investment, I - as a EU citizen - would fall under the global reach of the US tax system. Whenever I open a bank account in Germany you have a checkbox ‘do you have any direct business dealings in the US and are liable to IRS rules’. And if you check that box you can pretty much expect to be declined as a regular customer. Banks are way too scared of multibillion law suits by the US authorities and rather loose the peanuts they can earn with me.
So, I’ ll continue to donate or buy stuff from purism rather than invest in them.
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Well, there’s one reason I am not going to invest: Refundgate.
I totally want Purism to succeed, and I’ll continue contributing to PureOS as best as I can. But with red flags like that, hard pass on investing.
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Can someone explain to me why Purism is CONSTANTLY getting investment money? I mean CONSTANTLY.
I don’t understand how they cleared 5 million, 8 million, and more, and yet still need so much investment cash?
How much debt can Purism take on and still hope to dig itself out of?
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Similar here. Everyone gets asked whether they come under the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and if you fail to deny that you do then all your tax and income data will get shipped over to the US government. Thanks to both governments. Not.
This is not debt though.
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Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but being beholden to your investors is another form of debt. I just don’t understand why this is necessary if sales have been going so well?
It is well known that going public is the fastest way to loosing control of a company.
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I’ll offer my takes on this. This is better than venture capital, and it begs the question of whether any control is being ceded. IANAL, so I have no idea of what happens to a Social Purpose Corporation in the face of a hostile takeover. However, in the face of such a monster, you’d probably get a chance to take profits and run.
New investment is often needed for new product offerings. Good sales might not mean enough for future R&D.
If Purism fails, our hardware will still work, and the path to future hardware/software is still set.
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Growth ambitions. Premature profitability leads nowhere.
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In the general case, yes, but if you look at the actual number of shares being offered v. the total number of shares on issue then control is a non-problem here. (In fact, the Convertible Notes, were they to convert, would result in the issue of more shares, if memory serves.)
Inevitably it creates pressures.
You could read the disclosure document that they are supplying.
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We all should. SEC and CPA reviewed numbers.
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My only dog in this fight is that I want Purism to succeed. Why? Selfish reasons and altruistic reasons: I want there to be a successful company in this arena. I want my phone to work well and be supported. I want the world to benefit from a company that is successfully doing good work in the free and open source arena. I hope they make a pile of money but keep everything open-source.
Do I agree with the way they have run things to-date? No, not really. Do I find them suspect? Yeah, I do. Do I think the ends justify the means sometimes so that the end result is positive? Yes, I do. Is this likely a good “investment”? It depends how you define “investment”. Would I put my children’s college fund on it? No. Would I invest to further the above described ideals? Yes, I would.
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Clearly you didn’t read the disclosure document. It specifically says that the SEC didn’t review anything. From the offering document:
… These securities have not been recommended or approved by any federal securities commission or regulatory authority. Furthermore, these authorities have not passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this document.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not pass upon the merits of any securities offered or the terms of the offering, nor does it pass upon the accuracy or completeness of any offering document or literature.
These securities are offered under exemption from registration; however, the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission has not made an independent determination that these securities are exempt from registration.
i.e. The SEC hasn’t looked at anything. The fact is that these securities have been declared exempt via Reg CF … which means that you are counting on the representations of StartEngine (the registered entity that is, AFAICT, collecting 10% of the security sales for, shepherding this offering).
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